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Venus de Milo
| condition = Arms broken off; otherwise intact | type = Marble | height_metric = 203 | city = Paris, France | museum = Louvre Museum | italic title=no }} The Venus de Milo ( , Aphroditi tis Milou) is an ancient Greek statue and one of the most famous works of ancient Greek sculpture. Initially it was attributed to the sculptor Praxiteles, but from an inscription that was on its plinth, the statue is thought to be the work of Alexandros of Antioch. Created sometime between 130 and 100 BC, the statue is believed to depict Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty; however, some scholars claim it is the sea-goddess Amphitrite, venerated on Milos.https://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/aphrodite-known-venus-de-milo It is a marble sculpture, slightly larger than life size at high. Part of an arm and the original plinth were lost following its discovery. It is currently on permanent display at the Louvre Museum in Paris. The statue is named after the Greek island of Milos, where it was discovered. Description The Venus de Milo's arms are missing, for unknown reasons. There is a filled hole below her right breast that originally contained a metal tenon that would have supported the separately carved right arm. Discovery and history Discovery It is generally asserted that the Venus de Milo was discovered on 8 April 1820 by a peasant named Yorgos Kentrotas, inside a buried niche within the ancient city ruins of Milos, the current village of Trypiti, on the island of Milos (also Melos, or Milo) in the Aegean, which was then a part of the Ottoman Empire. Elsewhere the discoverers are identified as Yorgos Bottonis and his son Antonio. Paul Carus gave the site of discovery as "the ruins of an ancient theater in the vicinity of Castro, the capital of the island", adding that Bottonis and his son "came accidentally across a small cave, carefully covered with a heavy slab and concealed, which contained a fine marble statue in two pieces, together with several other marble fragments. This happened in February, 1820". He apparently based these assertions on an article he had read in the Century Magazine. The Australian historian Edward Duyker, citing a letter written by Louis Brest who was the French consul in Milos in 1820, asserts the discoverer of the statue was Theodoros Kendrotas and that he has been confused with his younger son Giorgios (known phonetically as Yorgos) who later claimed credit for the find. Duyker asserts that Kendrotas was taking stone from a ruined chapel on the edge of his property – terraced land that had once formed part of a Roman gymnasium – and that he discovered an oblong cavity some 1.2 x 1.5 metres deep in the volcanic tuff. It was in this cavity, which had three wings, that Kendrotas first noticed the upper part of the statue. Notwithstanding these anomalies, the consensus is that the statue was found in two large pieces (the upper torso and the lower draped legs) along with several herms (pillars topped with heads), fragments of the upper left arm and left hand holding an apple, and an inscribed plinth. In France In 1871, during the Paris Commune uprising, many public buildings were burned. The Venus de Milo statue was secreted out of the Louvre Museum in an oak crate and hidden in the basement of the Prefecture of Police. Though the Prefecture was burned, the statue survived undamaged.The Greater Journey, David McCullough, p.326 In 1920, sculptor Robert Ingersoll Aitken created a stir when he criticized the display, lighting, and placement of the statue of Venus de Milo in the museum. In the autumn of 1939, the Venus was packed for removal from the Louvre in anticipation of the outbreak of war. Scenery trucks from the Comédie-Française transported the Louvre's masterpieces to safer locations in the countryside. During World War II, the statue was sheltered safely in the Château de Valençay, along with the Winged Victory of Samothrace and [[Dying Slave|Michelangelo's Slaves]]. Fame The great fame of the Venus de Milo during the nineteenth century owed much to a major propaganda effort by the French authorities. In 1815, France had returned the Medici Venus to the Italians after it had been looted by Napoleon Bonaparte. The Medici Venus, regarded as one of the finest classical sculptures in existence, caused the French to promote the Venus de Milo as a greater treasure than that which they recently had lost. The statue was praised dutifully by many artists and critics as the epitome of graceful female beauty. However, Pierre-Auguste Renoir was among its detractors, labelling it a "big gendarme". Modern use showing how the statue may have originally looked]] The statue has greatly influenced masters of modern art; one prime example is Salvador Dalí's Venus de Milo with Drawers. The statue was formerly part of the seal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), one of the oldest associations of plastic surgeons in the world. In February 2010, the German magazine Focus featured a doctored image of this Venus giving Europe the middle finger, which resulted in a defamation lawsuit against the journalists and the publication."Greece Pursues Venus Defamation Case" , Diehn, Sonya Angelica Courthouse News Service. 1 December 2011 They were found not guilty by the Greek court."Greek Court acquits Focus journalists" . Burda Newsroom, 3 April 2012 A plot to steal the statue is at the center of the 1966 spoof spy film The Last of the Secret Agents?, starring Marty Allen and Steve Rossi. In The Simpsons episode "Homer Badman", a Gummi Venus de Milo parodies the statue. Charlie Drake had a sketch in which the statue lost its arms as a result of careless work by museum employees tasked with packing it.https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/5e19638c44cc4d6aa82221bf5fafe088 "Venus" is the second track on Television's 1977 debut album Marquee Moon. In the refrain, the narrator falls into "the arms of Venus de Milo". The fourth track on Miles Davis' 1957 album Birth of the Cool is named "Venus de Milo". "The Venus de Milo was a beautiful lass she held the world in the palm of her hand, she lost both her arms in a wrestling Match to win a brown eyed handsome man." Is a lyric in the song Brown Eyed Handsome Man written by Chuck Berry and covered by Buddy Holly. The popular Lewis E. Gensler and Leo Robin song Love Is Just Around the Corner contains the lyrics "Venus de Milo was noted for her charms, But strictly between us, you're cuter than Venus, And what's more you've got arms." Femen movement On 3 October 2012, French activists belonging to Femen protested against rape by standing topless in front of the Venus de Milo. The activists shouted, "We have hands to stop rape". They stated they chose the Venus de Milo because it has no arms, arguing this best symbolizes a woman’s helplessness and vulnerability. This protest followed an incident in Tunisia where a woman faced charges of indecency after she said she was raped by police officers. See also *Aphrodite of Knidos References Citations Sources * * * *[http://www.enotes.com/oxford-art-encyclopedia/venus-de-milo Venus de Milo: The Oxford Dictionary of Art] * [http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/miscellanea/venus/venusdemilo.html James Grout, Venus de Milo, part of the '' Encyclopædia Romana''] External links * Venus de Milo - official page * 3D model of Venus de Milo via photogrammetric survey of an 1850 Louvre atelier plaster cast at Skulpturhalle Basel museum * Musée du Louvre – Louvre Museum : Venus de Milo Category:1820 archaeological discoveries Category:Venus de Milo Category:Hellenistic sculpture Category:Ancient Melos Category:2nd-century BC sculptures Category:Ancient Greek and Roman sculptures of the Louvre Category:Archaeological discoveries in Greece Category:Nude sculptures Category:Marble sculptures in France